Grow Your Cashflow Podcast

Pascal Wagner (00:00)
What can you learn from someone who's invested in close to over 100 real estate deals as both an LP and a GP? Today, Hans Box shares what works, what doesn't and how to stack the odds in your favor. In this episode of the passive income playbook on the best ever CRE show, we are breaking it all down with the insider insights from someone who's been on both sides of the table.

I'm your host, Pascal Wagner, and today we're joined by Hans Box, co-founder of Box Wilson Equity. Hans has been involved in over $350 million worth of multifamily and self-storage deals and invested as an LP in more than 70 opportunities and managed thousands of units as a GP. If you've ever wondered how to build a smarter buy box, stress test, underwriting assumptions, or protect yourself as a past investor, this episode is packed with practical advice,

you won't want to miss. So with that, let's dive in. Welcome Hans. Yeah, I'm happy to have you here. So I'd love to kind of just, you know, I've given a little bit of an intro about you, but I'd love for you to kind of dive in a little bit more about how long you've been in real estate as both a general partner, someone who raises money for real estate deals that you do yourself, and as someone who invests in deals as an LP or limited partner.

Hans Box (00:53)
thanks for having me Pascal

Yeah, so I got started back right after the GFC, the great financial crisis, started buying rent houses. Actually, those are my first quote real estate deals that I was buying in 2008, nine, 10, that period. And during that time, I actually made my first couple of small LP investments into multifamily. And as you can imagine back then, it was a little bit different game.

Uh, everything was like 20, 30,000 a door and it was hard to raise money, but there was incredible deals everywhere. If you could figure out how to get dad in mind, which was basically very non-existent back then. So, you know, I've really, I started, uh, investing as an LP, you could say back into probably 2009 or 10. And that's, that's kind of the same time in parallel, it's kicking off my GP, uh, uh, experience, I suppose. Um, long story short.

My first LP deal, I ended up taking over from the sponsor because the other LPs voted myself and another gentleman in to take over. And we kicked the other sponsor out because he wasn't performing. And we took over the deal as in control of the deal and turned it around and sold it a couple of years later for a nice game. So that was my first quote GP deal. And from there is where, where my career started as a GP with, with that other individual who's now my business partner.

Ironically enough, so we made it a bad deal is what happened

Pascal Wagner (02:35)
Yeah, yeah, I'd to dive into that real quick. It's just like a unique story, right? When you how do you go in to taking over a deal if you if you're a first time LP? How do you even how did you get voted into that? How often does that kind of thing happen? You know, I imagine if you're a new LP listening to this, that that just hearing that story is pretty eye opening or scary.

Walk us through that a little bit.

Hans Box (02:58)
Yeah. So, I mean, basically we were lucky number one that the way the partnership agreement was written is that we, could, as limited partners with, I think, I think this is, you know, from memory 12, 13 years ago or more than that. ⁓ geez, yeah, more than that. More like 15 years ago, that we as LPs could have required interest or the majority, like 66 and two thirds interest to

Move the sponsor out of the deal even if if he wasn't committing fraud, right? So it's it's one of those operating agreement It's nice to have there's not a lot of them that have that anymore Back then luckily we had it and we could remove him just because he wasn't performing and we could see the deal You know going bad and we could see us losing money But he wasn't he didn't do anything like fraud or bankruptcy or anything like that So we didn't we were able to remove him luckily and we got voted in I think mainly because I'm

you know, recovering CPA, was with PricewaterhouseCoopers at the time and transitioning out of that. And myself and this other individual who has an engineering background, we were kind of the ones that were asking a lot of questions and pushing. And we were probably the only ones in the partnership that understood at least at some level that this deal might not go well. And I think, you know, because of the way we were in the meetings and the questions we asked,

that's what led to us being unanimously voted to take over except for one individual. I guess technically not unanimous. There was one person that said no, that was close to the sponsor, but yeah, you know, we were just lucky that the other LPs believed in us and, and, know, because of our, I think it was a little bit because of our backgrounds, financial backgrounds, and because of the good questions that we were asking in the meetings that we got voted to take over. So

Pascal Wagner (04:40)
And I guess like what made you decide or believe that the sponsor was underperforming and that you as an outsider who had never done a deal like this before could perform better?

Hans Box (04:54)
Well, mean, you just look at the pro forma, look at what he projected. He was over rehabbing a deal. Even a green LP like myself at the time could tell that putting six panel doors on a class C minus property in East Dallas that had a really rough tenant base just was a waste of money. And you could just tell. The financials weren't great. It wasn't leasing up when other properties were.

were higher occupied, the collections were bad, one thing after another. you know, we, we actually pushed him well before any of this happened to change management companies. Cause I think a big part of the problem was the person that was managing it, who was close to him. Uh, it was a management company, but it's essentially one woman with employees. wasn't like a full fledged management company. And long story short, they were close to each other. These individual, uh, the sponsor in this person and he wouldn't.

remove her and he wouldn't hire the person that we had heard, you know, in the DFW market was a really great turnaround specialist in terms of management. And she wouldn't come to work for it, which told us something that this person who was a really great turnaround management company wouldn't go work for this other end of the sponsor. And that also told us something. So we talked to her and, you know, we could just

We knew that we were well behind pro forma and the way the deal was going, we were going to lose money, if not all our money in the deal. And so even being green, understanding financials, which I think was super important in which myself and my business partner really did because I was CPA and he ran a global sales organization. So he understood budgets. mean, it's not rocket science, none of this is. So we understood it. that's what, you know, it's not like I was going to go on site and manage the deal myself, although I did sit on site.

because I had to finish managing the rehab that he did finish. And I was literally sitting on site doing this during, you know, 2011 or 12. So I left a high paying corporate job to go do this and take this over. Yep. I had, I had at the same time, they quit my corporate job to get into real estate. So it was all kind of at the same time. And so, you know, I had a lot of motive, you know, to, make sure that I saved my money and do well here.

Pascal Wagner (06:52)
What?

Hans Box (07:06)
And it was my goal the whole time during this time was to become a GP someday, but not in this manner, right? I had never planned it in this manner at all. So, you know, once you get into it and just learn how to read financials, it really wasn't that hard to understand that we were not in a good place.

Pascal Wagner (07:23)
I imagine that dramatically shaped how you approach deals moving forward.

Hans Box (07:27)
Yeah, very good statement question, whatever that was, because my investment philosophy was definitely shaped by that deal, because that was my first deal. then it made me become, you know, I'm already of CPA, right? So I'm already somewhat conservative, you know, just by nature, probably to a degree. And then almost losing the vast majority of my net worth, by the way, you I wasn't rich. I didn't have a ton of money. And so investing 100K in that deal,

which I had cashed out my 401k to do, the way, was kind of scary. so it really did shape my investment philosophy going forward and how I look at being an LP in deals and how I look at looking at deals for my own GP for my deals for my investors. So I look at both of them the same way, because to me, there's no difference. I'm going to do the same deals as a GP that I would invest in as an LP.

Pascal Wagner (08:19)
I'd love to pull on that thread a little bit more where what do you think was were you naive to going into that deal that you are not that you make sure that you're not anymore?

Hans Box (08:25)
of course.

100%. I didn't know how to, you know, I, now I could, I could have looked at that deal for five minutes and looked at the business plan and looked at the sponsor and probably really like, no, I'm not going to dive into this. There's no way I'm going to invest in this deal right now. If you gave me that deal and set it in front of me now, um, blindly, and I didn't know what happened. I, I've almost positive I would look at it for five or 10 minutes and probably be in. Um, but back then, of course I didn't, I was.

CPA of course, I, but you know, coming from a PricewaterhouseCoopers background where everybody is very professional and on the up and up and, you just know that everyone you talk to and deal with there is, is, is going to be, you know, on the up and up, I guess. Then stepping into the real estate world where there are a degree of it's a different world. You know, it's not as professional. You have to be careful about who you invest with and who you do business with. There's more.

Sharks, whatever you want to call it. And this individual wasn't a bad person. I don't want to say that, but he was kind of a little bit arrogant and he didn't have the experience. He's a really good talker and a really good salesman. And for me, coming from a CPA background at Pricewaterhouse, I didn't have the ability then to basically figure that out by reading the business plan or even talking to him. I just thought, man, this guy knows what he's doing, you know, and I want to learn from him. I want to invest with him. So, but now

totally change, right? And I can sniff that out pretty damn quick now by looking at business plans.

Pascal Wagner (09:51)
Are there certain key things maybe, you know, like, hey, you know, taking a class C property and adding, you know, class A style renovations to it, you know, never makes sense. Being in certain markets doesn't make sense. What are some tangible takeaways that you might have taken from that?

Hans Box (10:10)
I mean, geez, like, where do I start? Right? I mean, it's, let's take the sponsor, you know, first, you know, a good sponsor can take a marginal deal and make it a great one where a bad sponsor can take a home run and turn it into, you know, run it into the ground. And so the first thing you really need to do is look at the sponsor themselves and look at their track record. And I think, I don't think I did a great job of that at the time, you know, I believed him without verifying. I didn't, I didn't actually ever see a real track record of where he.

personally bought deals himself and repositioned the deals and turned them around. He was involved with them through his father, but I don't think he actually had the requisite experience in doing it himself. And that's where I messed up. And I still see that now where people give, I have this experience, but it's indirect. They just raised money for a deal. They didn't actually involve, they haven't bought deals themselves. And so you've got to really dig into a track record.

And that's one thing, for instance, that I didn't do is dig into a track record at all. then, you know, was other things about the value add. Did I really understand what a value add meant back then? No, now I do. And that's one of the first things I want to see in a business plan is I want to see deep value add. And I want you as a sponsor to prove that to me in the business plan that not only can you say value add, everybody says value add, but is your business plan clear and articulate?

And does it support the value add strategy that you're implementing on the property? I.e. can you actually get the rent you're getting by showing me a comp analysis and showing me all the comps in the area? Are they the same property? Show me how you're to raise rent and what are you going to do? I mean, you can get pretty deep in that. And when I read a business plan now, I can look at something like that and spend 20, 30 minutes and know pretty quick whether

I believe that this is a true value add. Yes, you have to believe what is put on the business plan, but you read enough of them. It's pretty obvious when you're dealing with sophisticated sponsor that actually knows how to reposition a property and do the right analysis to see whether they can get the 20, 30 % rent increases and another that doesn't. It's pretty obvious. it's track record. It's true value add. Are there any like...

Nowadays, wasn't so much back then, but even then he was a little salesy, right? And now it's even more obvious because there's a lot of salesiness going on that you see like on Facebook and online and somebody has a flashy website and it's always posting on Facebook about the next deal they did and all those things. The best sponsors that I invest with as an LP and us too, I don't post on Facebook about deals. don't actually, our website, quite honestly,

Yes, it needs to be improved, but it's the last thing we're worried about. We're worried about operating the deal and finding good deals, not having a flashy website. I basically don't do sales. That's not what we're in the business for. so, like I said, the best sponsors that I've invested with aren't salesy at all. And you don't see them advertising. They get rich quietly because they concentrate on what they...

saving investor money and mitigating risk and buying the deal and finding good deals and operating those deals, not selling for the next deal and raising money constantly. And back then it wasn't so much online, but I would have been able to see if he presented the opportunity to me now and he talked to me, I think I could probably see through him now because of my experience in dealing with people. It's all about genuine and being authentic. That's really all it is.

Pascal Wagner (13:32)
Yes.

It really is. talked on that thread a little bit. I've noticed quite a bit. There are many syndicators in the space that say, I've raised money, you know, $100 million for this fund or, know, I participated in 40 different multifamily deals. And you realize that they were just a team member on the team where they didn't actually, like they might've raised

a million out of the 100 million or they, you know, we're in charge of one very specific thing and that doesn't negate their experience. But I think it's important to when you're talking to these people understand exactly like have it's kind of like when you do a job interview and you sit down and you ask them, okay, actually walk me through what did you do on a daily basis? And, you know, and really get the understanding of what they do. So I think that's great.

Hans Box (14:10)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Pascal Wagner (14:23)
Great takeaway, great point. I'd love to ask you about maybe some of the deals that you're doing most recently. You've talked about the Kinsey or the Bentley, two deals that you've done or you're in the middle of doing or that you've done in 2024. I think right now everyone's wondering, okay, how do you buy deals when interest rates are so high? What makes sense nowadays? Walk us through.

what you're buying, how you look at the market.

Hans Box (14:50)
Yeah, you know, multifamily obviously got real frothy in 2021, 22. And a lot of people that made a lot of money the two or three years before that are now in trouble because they bought deals during that time when cap rates at their absolute lowest. And they're using a lot of those people were using floating rate bridge loans to buy these deals because it was the only way they could financially engineer the returns.

which in turns out most of them, almost all of them were false, right? And people are unfortunately feeling the pain right now through that. didn't buy any, we didn't invest in any multifamily during that time, other than some very specialty tax abated kind of deals that has a different profile. So, and even those had fixed rate debt on top of it. So there's a lot of, there is distress in the market. And so what we're seeing here is

You know, like there's a deal that we're looking at now to invest in and it is a deal in Alabama in the Birmingham area. And you know, the profile of this kind of deal is it's not, you know, it's a classy deal, 115 units or so. don't remember exactly. Not a big deal, but the beauty of it is, is that the group that's selling it has a bunch of properties in Atlanta that are in trouble because Atlanta's had an oversupply. They've had issues and these are, and I'm pretty sure the group bought those

deals in this time of the frothiness and they just paid too much. People were paying too much money because they were engineering returns with way too high leverage. that's what I was trying to tell people when I looked at deals because people send me deals to look at it and I was like, dude, why are they doing a bridge loan? The deal is 95 % occupied. A bridge loan is not made to buy 95 % occupied property. A bridge loan, the use of a bridge loan is to bridge.

That's the whole purpose. And it should be to bridge a distressed deal 70, 80 % occupied until it becomes stable. A 95 % occupied deal is stable. You shouldn't be using a bridge loan. The reason they were using a bridge loan is because Fannie and Freddie Mac, when they look at deals and look to lend on deals, they were only offering like 50, 60 % loan to purchase price. And the reason is because they have a debt service coverage ratio and they limited their loan proceeds because that's the price they

calculated that the deal was worth. And, a lot of these sponsors were like, well, I can't raise 40%. I can't get a 55 % loan or 60 % loan and raise 40, 45 % of the equity. If I just do the math, the deal is a pencil, right? But if I get an 85 % loan only after he's 15%, suddenly the math somehow works, right? As long as the interest rates stay low, but they did. And, and then people started getting killed because rates went up, uh, rate caps, because the volatility of rates went up.

And then all the money that they had set aside to do the rehabs and do the value add, there may have actually been a value add component to these deals. They couldn't even spend the money in the rehab. They had to use that extra reserve money that was the rehab money to pay their loans, to pay their interest rate payments or their rate caps. Plus property taxes went up, insurance ballooned, all that. And that's just hit everyone. And so this group, I think, bought during that time in Atlanta, and they've got this one deal in the Birmingham area.

And I think they're coming out of, based on the purchase price that we're in a contract for, they're coming out at 60 to 65 % on the dollar. So they're only getting 60 to 65 % of their original equity out of the deal. And they need that to go, I think, go help with their other deals in Atlanta. So they're dumping this deal basically to get out and get rid of it and concentrate on their bigger deals in Atlanta. And it's those kinds of opportunities that we look for to invest in. And so this kind of deal,

Right now we're projecting upper fours, low fives, year one cash flow, which is hard to get in multifamily and it has been hard to get. And then from there, it ramps up really quick to eight, 10%. By year four, we're projecting a re-five conservatively, 50 % of equity. And then we're well into the low to mid teens of cash on cash after that. So, you know, we're starting at five, eight, 10, 11, and then it goes up to like 13, 15, 17.

in terms of cash on cash return on this deal. If, know, big if, and this is why you have to do your job as an LP and a GP in looking at the value add that we do the renovations and we raise the rents over a three year period, not in one year, like a lot of sponsors I saw would do. They were like, oh, we'll raise all the rents in a year. You can't do that. You know, there's, you don't have a hundred percent turnover in the deal. we, you know, we over three years, we're going to raise the rents up to market for the upgrades we're doing.

refi the deal at the end of your four. And then we're projecting to hold it right now until you're 10. But of course, as everyone knows, you sell it when it makes the most sense. if rates drop or interest rates drop or cap rates go down, of those go together, then we would sell it if it made sense for our investors. right now, I think it's a great time to buy multifamily. If you can get moderate cash flow.

and hold on for the next two years because supply across the nation is dropping off a Rates went up, lenders aren't lending on new construction, equity is hard to raise for new construction, nobody's permitting deals. And so all of the research shows that multifamily is going to be in the lower, some of the lowest supply in some of these markets ever. Like Denver, think by 2027, we'll have the lowest.

supply coming online. It's almost ever had compared to demand and things like that. that's happening across Austin, right? Which is where I live. We don't own anything here, but I live here. You know, it was gangbusters, 96 % occupancy. Now it's in the mid 80s, 85 % or so. But Austin's still growing. It's just because we built too much. It's what always happens. You build too much, and now there's nothing going to be built over the next, say, starting in like 2026 or so and going forward.

you're going to have two or three years there where very little is going to be hitting the market. And so if you can buy now in Austin and hang on for two years and make decent cashflow, it's, and you're a good operator, that's always a caveat in all of this, then you're probably going to do really well because occupancies and rents will just go up when there's no, there's no supply hitting the market. And that's what we see. And that's why we're looking at this particular deal is good cashflow.

You know, not it's it's has good bones. It's in a really good market with good schools. We are investing in a deal that's close by there, so we already know the in general. The sub markets are slightly different, but not much. And so it's just a good down the fairway single. We look for singles and doubles. We're not trying to hit home runs or anything like that. You know, mid to upper teens IRR, depending on what we exit at a cap rate. That's really all we're looking for. So.

Pascal Wagner (21:35)
This cycle happens every real estate cycle where everyone overbuilt, then a crash happens of some kind, building stops. And then, you know, pretty much four years later on the dot, you could say that's when there's the highest demand. And that's when building starts again, when you have the highest demand, because that's when things pencil.

Hans Box (21:53)
Mm-hmm.

Pascal Wagner (21:57)
And we're now back in that cycle.

Hans Box (21:59)
Yep, yep. I agree. I mean, that's the real estate cycle. And it's just you have to be go through a few of them to understand how that works. And I think a lot of people are getting caught. They got caught up in the frothiness of a couple of years ago, unfortunately.

Pascal Wagner (22:11)
So I think it's pretty interesting. you mentioned something right now where it's like you're looking. You're looking at deals that have very modest cash flow. You know, I think most of the people I talk to, you know, when they're getting into real estate, they I talk to them and they say, hey, I was investing in all these deals for cash flow and they ended up not distributing anything or they're they're distributing only a couple percent. And.

And so, you know, when you look at a deal initially, like the one you're talking about, that cash flow doesn't seem very interesting if you're trying to use that to support yourself. Is this type of product something for that type of investor who's trying to retire and live off of the income from those assets? Or is this more of like a

an equity play where? Yeah, I guess just like how does how does the type of deal that you're investing in where, you know, the cash flow should go up over time? Who's that for?

Hans Box (23:13)
Well, I mean, this deal that I just talked about, it actually, it's starting at five and the next year two, it's at eight. And then year three, we're approaching double digits and year four, we're returning half your money. And then we're hitting mid to upper teens, cash on cash returns, which I think anyone would take, you know, that's really good. Yeah, you got to wait out a couple of years before you get into double digit cash flow. you know,

the more cashflow you have, the more you de-risk the deal because you're getting more money back quicker, right? And so I think a deal like this is perfect for the cashflow investor because you're getting equity and you're getting really good cashflow for this particular deal. Now there are other deals where that we do that may not have as much cashflow because it's a deeper value add. So maybe it is only two or 3 % year one and then 6 % year two and then 8 % year three and four, and then it's slower to ramp up, right?

But in a deal like that may have more of an equity play and have a bigger chunk at the end, or it may be a little bit less, maybe a newer deal that has a little bit less room for cashflow because you pay a little bit higher cap rate. So everyone has to have their own investment philosophy. I think somebody that's coming in and looking at any of these real estate deals, you need to decide as an LP whether or not it has a true value.

Because if you're investing in a deal and it doesn't have a value add, to me, there's no... I hear this thrown around sometimes that, we're buying a multifamily deal that's a yield play. It's not a value add, it's a yield play. We're just going to clip a coupon. I think that's quite honestly BS. Every real estate deal that you do and invest in, whether we do as a GP or I do as an LP, I want to see that there's a value add component. Because what it is is if there's no value add component, you're buying it at retail, right? You're buying it at the top of the market.

But if there's a value add, I buy it here. But over the first two or three years, I add this amount of margin, right? So this part, right? And this margin, this margin of safety, which is what Buffett talks about, is that margin of safety is what protects your equity. So if the market, four years from now, we've added this much value, but four years from now, the market, we had a black swan event, things happen, and the market tanks. We've got this amount of cushion before it starts eating into the equity value of the property.

But if you bought it here and it's quote unquote a yield play, it's just throwing off whatever, know, um, number one, I don't know how you would buy an 8 % deal and not have a value add because you would never throw out off 8 % year one without a value add component unless you bought it, you know, off the prop, you know, the courthouse steps somehow and got an amazing deal upfront. For the most part, if you don't have a value add component, you're buying at the top of the market, you're buying it at retail and you don't have a margin of safety. So

I would say to any investor, not counting credit funds, that's different, but any commercial real estate you buy needs to have a value added component. Some of those will create a great cashflow investment that you can hold for years. And some of those won't necessarily have cashflow, but we'll have a kicker at sale, right? Like we have an industrial deal we bought. We haven't done a ton of industrial, but we did one in San Antonio and it's, it can cashflow a little bit.

But the idea is because industrial is different, you can't turn over the units as quickly. So we have to wait three and four years before these tenants leases renew. But when they do, we're going to be able to increase the rents a ton. And then in year four or five, we'll sell and we're projecting upper teens IRR on that deal. But it's not going to really cash flow all in the way because it's going to take four to five years to turn all the tenants because it's industrial. And they had a weighted average.

lease term that was like three years, two and a half, three, four years, and we'd have to add TI. So it's a different play. It's a value add, but maybe it's lower cash flow, but it's a higher backend capital gain.

Pascal Wagner (26:52)
I want to take a transition here. And I know that you've been working quite a bit on a presentation on how to do due diligence as an LP on GPs. I would love for you to kind of explain a little bit, maybe like what prompted that and to start that part of the conversation.

Hans Box (27:12)
Yeah, sure. And I've actually we've through our just natural conversation, I've already touched on some of those points, right? When you're evaluating the sponsor, but so I because I invest in as an LP in so many deals, just over the years, people started, you know, we'd send a deal to me and say, you know, hey, can you look at this deal and tell me whether you think it's a good deal? And it's like, you know, for a while there, I was trying to

help out friends and family and acquaintances with that, but it got to be too much. I can't look at every deal for everybody and I can't be deciding whether a deal is good or bad for a particular individual. It's just, I'm not an investment advisor, that's not my business. And I don't have the time. And so it all started with somebody asking me, hey, can you just do a presentation on how you look at deals at like a meetup that I was going to at the time. And then it just kind of evolved from there. And I ended up, now I've ended up,

creating like a really big long presentation about stepping through, you know, like the important terms and evaluating the sponsor, evaluating the pro forma, the fees and comp models and what to look out for there and then company agreements and things like that. And, and I'm actually, you know, I actually did a full day presentation about this for a mastermind that I'm in, Justin Donald's Lifestyle Investor Mastermind. I did a full presentation there for everyone, like

six hour presentation where we went through a case study and I went through the entire presentation and now that's actually has turned into a course that I'm working on producing for everyone. But it all started with just a meetup and a PowerPoint is where it started.

Pascal Wagner (28:43)
Yeah,

so walk us through like, maybe, can you pull in some of the biggest misconceptions you think LPs make when they when they come into these deals?

Hans Box (28:54)
Well, yeah.

Pascal Wagner (28:54)
Let's orient it around this course, right?

Hans Box (28:56)
Yeah, mean, so I mean, gosh, where do you start, right? I think one of the biggest misconceptions that people do is they just look at the returns projected and a lot of newbies will just pick the deal with the highest returns, right? And that means nothing in these business plans, right? You have to be able to, as an LP, is to really dive into the pro forma and the sponsor and understand whether or not, what's the risk profile?

this deal because a deal that's 20 % IRR but has a super high risk profile, I would much rather do a deal that is 12 % IRR and have a low risk profile than do a high risk A lot of newbies don't even know how to look at an IRR versus an equity multiple and then look at the value add strategy and how the sponsor presents that value add strategy and how they basically back up their claim.

They don't know how to look at that and compare the two and go, okay, I don't, you know, I know actually how to, to whether I believe the sponsor or not, and whether he or she can achieve that value add and that IRR, because all you have to do is change a cap rate or, or move one little thing in Excel spreadsheet. And you can take a, a deal that is 12 IRR to an 18 IRR all day long. Right. And, and so.

It's about looking at the entire deal and looking at everything that I just mentioned, looking at the pro forma, understanding how to read the pro forma, understanding how the sponsor is getting paid. they incentivized to do better as you do better as an LP? Are they making a ton of fees upfront beyond the market normal market norms? And are they, is the sponsor investing in the deal besides you? Are they putting money in their own deals? And so it is.

Pascal Wagner (30:30)
and not just money

from fees.

Hans Box (30:32)
Right, right. Exactly. And I don't have a problem with fees. I'm a GP and I pay, you know, I don't have a problem with who I invest with making fees because you might not do a deal for an entire year and spend all your money and time looking for deals and spending, you know, you have overhead, you have employees, you have to be able to cover that. Right. And that's what the fees are for. But the fees shouldn't make the sponsor rich, which should make the sponsor rich. And I want the sponsor to get rich because that means I did well as an LP. You should get rich mostly on the back end.

That's where the GP should make most of their money. Nothing wrong with fees though, to be very clear. I actually am one that doesn't, I don't care if the sponsor makes a hundred grand acquisition fee and then invest a hundred grand in the deal. That was the fee he deserved because of the time spent. And obviously I have confidence in this individual. So he's taking money that he received and putting it right back into the deal. That's, that's a hundred thousand. That's hard money.

And to me, that's totally fine. Some people have this thing, they want to net it out and I don't actually agree with that. But long story short, well, because of what I just said, because they just, the fees, they spend all this time working to find the deal, raising the money, spending their own money, doing due diligence, driving around, trying to find deals for a year. They have overhead, they have analysts, they have payroll. That is part of their income.

Pascal Wagner (31:31)
Why not?

Hans Box (31:47)
And it's no different than part of your income that you're investing in a deal. You don't want to lose that a hundred thousand. It's their income. They want it. You know, it's not like a lot of these sponsors don't have any more money, right? There are some of these that are just getting started, right? And so I, to me, it's part of your normal income. If I make a hundred thousand on acquisition fee and I reinvested in the deal and the deal didn't go well, I just lost a hundred grand. You know, I don't, I don't somehow say, no, I need to put 200 grand in to count as 100. That is it.

that's part of the GP's income and how they pay for overhead. And so I just don't agree with that. That the way some people look at it, but I didn't want to go up the topic. The main topic is, that most of the money should be made on the back end and it should be, the sponsor should be incentivized to make, to do better on the deal. They make more money. You know, I don't think the sponsors should be making a million. You know, I've seen these deals, these big deals where one sponsor was

buying a $60 million property, but he had like a 2 3 % acquisition fee. It's crazy. The guy was making well over a million dollars day one, which is nuts. mean, it should be, in other words, a 2 % acquisition fee for a 60 or $70 million deal versus a 2 % acquisition fee on a $20 million deal are a big difference, right? And it's just as hard to do either deal. It's just more zeros. You raise more money. That's it.

You're not really taking any more risk or doing that much more work to buy 20 million or 60 million dollar property other than raising the money and I don't think the sponsors should get paid that much more for that For a deal that much bigger. In other words, I think some fees should be capped if that makes sense

Pascal Wagner (33:21)
One of the questions I get pretty often from investors is, how do know what fees are market? How do you think through that?

Hans Box (33:28)
Well, I think there isn't a, you know, official document out there that tells you that. mean, I go through that in my presentation. You have to, and this is where a lot of LPs, you got to put in the reps. Look at a ton of deals. Talk to people that have done a lot of investments, like myself, like yourself, like other people, get in these groups.

and join these various online groups and you will know pretty quick if you spend some time researching, you'll know what market is. The information's out there. Back when I started investing, none of this was online. know, PPMs, all this stuff. Now you can just go, you can go get PPMs to review all day long just by getting on websites, getting on lists, joining CrowdStreet, those kind of places on top of it. I mean...

All the information is out there now and it literally was not 15 years ago. You really didn't know what you were getting into because it wasn't all transparent. But now it's out there. So when somebody says, I don't know what market is, well then spend some time figuring it out because you can go onto Google and figure that out probably within just a few minutes if you know what doing. If you don't talk to people and spend some time. I think the hardest, the worst thing is that a lot of LPs get FOMO and they feel like they see a deal and they're going to have to get in this first deal that they see.

And you know what? think if you have never invested, be patient. You might spend six to 12 months just learning how to bet deals. Don't put money into deals. They're always going to be another deal. Right. And so the worst thing LPs can do is rush into a deal and not understand what they're investing. there's a saying, I don't know who said it, but you, people, ⁓ overestimate what they can do in a year and underestimate what they can do in five or 10, whatever the saying is.

Point being is if you just start slow and just start stacking small singles and doubles and small wins and investing and don't lose money. And I'm serious about that. Don't lose the first thing you want to do is don't and this sounds stupid, but don't lose money because if you lose what's it if you if you invest a hundred grand in a deal, the deal doesn't go well and you only get 75 of it back. You lost 25 grand, right? What's the return you got to make on that seventy five thousand just to get back to where you were?

You got to make a 33 % return on that $75,000 just to get back to your original hundred grand, right? So it would have been a lot easier and lot better to go do a lower risk deal where you might've made a lower IRR, as I said, the 20 versus the 12 earlier, and go make your 12 instead of trying to shoot for the 20 and then end up losing 25 % of your money, right? So to me, you know, there's a space for taking moon shots and taking, if you've got enough extra cash and you're okay with losing it.

where you might make a three or four, 10X, whatever. But for the most part, most investors should just concentrate on doing deals that are down the fairway, singles and doubles. That's what really you should look

Pascal Wagner (36:09)
Something I'm taking away from this that I think is good to point out is like fees. Sometimes we say an acquisition fee of 2 3 percent is pretty normal. But if you're raising a $60 million deal versus a $20 million deal, the fees should actually scale down as the deal gets bigger.

Hans Box (36:29)
In my opinion, yes, especially the acquisition fee. Yes, I do agree with that.

Pascal Wagner (36:33)
Are there cases in fees where that's not the case? For example, maybe property management.

Hans Box (36:38)
Yeah, property management, you're right. It would be the same. typically, well, I mean, you've got the there's two types of management fees, right? There's the property management fee that's paid to the third, typically the third party management company. Or if you're it's a big multifamily sponsor you're investing with, they may have their own vertically integrated management company, but usually separate, right? They got the sponsor and they have this management company. That management company is going to make the 3%, whether it's a $10 million deal.

or a hundred million dollar deal, they're gonna make a 3 % on income collected per month or something like that. And that's very standard, right? And then there's usually an asset management fee that the sponsor makes for basically, and a lot of people get confused, the property management is the day-to-day operations. They're the ones that basically employ the, and pay the, basically they employ the employees that are on site, the manager, the maintenance guy, the leasing agents. And then there's the asset management fee, which is on,

is kind of on top of the management fee. And it's usually anywhere from one to 2%, one and a half to 2 % typically. And we're talking multifamily here. And it is based on the same number on collections, usually based on collections, in a multifamily deal on the income collected per month. And so that fee is paid to the sponsor for steering the ship essentially, right? The property manager's

management companies managing day to day, but you as the sponsor steering the ship and making big decisions around, you know, insurance, like what kind of insurance making doing property visits and basically staying on top of the property management company to make sure they're doing their job. Making decisions around property tax appraisals and a property tax, you know, all kinds of there's making decisions around rehab and whether or not, okay, do we need new roofs now we have to reserve for roofs.

What kind of upgrades are we going to do shopping the markets doing all the big stuff that make business decisions about steering the ship and steering, which way the property goes while the property management company is doing the day to day and leasing up the property. So it is, it's a well-deserved fee and it's a lot of work to honestly, to own and operate one of these as a GP. is by no means passive when you're a GP. It's a, it's a full day, a full day task every day. So it's, it's well-deserved.

Pascal Wagner (38:50)
So we've just talked about one of the big things for an LP is just understanding the deal, getting into the pro forma. What is another misconception or what are the maybe biggest aha's that people take away from your presentation?

Hans Box (39:03)
Well, I mean...

Basically, I think one of the big ahas that people would take away is that always bet on the jockey. And I referenced this earlier. I think the sponsor is more important than the deal itself. I'm not saying the deal isn't important. It needs to be a solid deal. The sponsor needs to do a good job supporting their value add business plan. And it needs to be well thought out. But in the end, I've learned over all the years

A good sponsor will typically do good on a deal, right? A good sponsor. So you need to learn how to bet sponsors, bet their track record, get to know them. Are they transparent? Well, they share their underwriting model with you. You know, I've, you know, I bet deals for a mastermind I'm in and I asked them, you know, I'll ask some of these groups for, Hey, can I actually see your underwriting model? Cause I want to understand how you got to this number. I want to see, I want to actually see how it flows. can't tell on a PDF, right? And so.

I've had some of them say, no, they won't give it to me because it's proprietary. And I'm like, it's an Excel model, right? There's nothing. Yeah. Yeah. There's no proprietary, nothing proprietary about an Excel model of a 200 unit apartment complex in Dallas, Fort Worth. It's, it's there are everywhere. can Google how to get it. Right. I just want to see your model and see how you got to the numbers and understand your assumptions. Right. And because I really do dive in when I do this vetting for the, for, uh, for this mastermind. And so a lot of times.

Pascal Wagner (39:57)
Proprietary. Yeah.

Hans Box (40:20)
When a sponsor won't share something like that with me, it's an immediate red flag and I'm out. Cause there's a million good deals out there. And number one, I want somebody that is transparent and will share everything with me. Because there's really nothing they can't share that would hurt them to share with a prospective LP at all. And you know, something to think about is if a sponsor is raising money from you and wants to take 50, 100, 200, $250,000 of your money to invest.

and they're withholding information from you when they're taking your money, what do you think is going to happen if the deal goes bad? Do you think they're really going to be transparent then? No. mean, don't, then that's when you're really going to be sorry that you didn't do a very good job vetting that sponsor because there's no way, if the sponsor won't share information when they're trying to convince you to invest in a they're certainly going to be probably less than, you know, open. They're not going to be as transparent.

if deals aren't, things aren't going well. So.

Pascal Wagner (41:17)
It's actually pretty mind blowing. I've come across larger funds that are 50, even 100 million that, for example, if you're investing in one of their private credit funds, they won't share the loan tape. You know, the document that says here are all the different loans in the portfolio and what interest rates they're at and when they expire and when they were made. And that's mind boggling to me. There's a lot of talk.

Hans Box (41:34)
Thank you.

Pascal Wagner (41:45)
I think if you get into this space and you're a new LP, you hear a lot of this, vet the sponsor, vet their track record. you hear it so many times after a certain point, it kind of gets generic. the specificity that

I kind of dig into is asking them, I repeat the same thing you do. If they're afraid to give you anything, that's a red flag. Can you dig into other...

instances or examples of when you say vet the sponsor and the track record,

Hans Box (42:19)
Mm-hmm.

Pascal Wagner (42:20)
what are the things that an LP without question should be able to ask? I think a lot of it, when I was an LP first, I didn't know that I could ask for certain documents. And then once I started hearing around like, you shouldn't ask for these things, then I would ask and then sometimes they...

They wouldn't give it to me and I'm not quite sure, but what are other clear examples that we can dig into that can help first time LP vet a sponsor?

Hans Box (42:46)
Sponsor

well, you know One That what is their track record in the asset class of this particular deal some people and we do the same Sometimes we invest across from you two or three different asset classes Well, I want to know if if I'm if I'm if this sponsor What is their actual history in track record in the asset class in the deal you're looking at to invest it? That's number one

Pascal Wagner (43:08)
So to point that out, if they're doing them, if you're looking at a multifamily deal that they've in Dallas, Fort Worth, that they have at least X number five multifamily deals in Dallas, Fort Worth, not in Pennsylvania, not in California.

Hans Box (43:25)
Well, I don't care so much about the geography. care about the asset class. So if somebody has a great track record in self storage and now they're getting into multifamily and they don't have a very good track record multifamily, that's where I get concerned. Even though I know that they obviously knew what they were doing in self storage and they, want to understand, they do this? I don't, to me running a multifamily deal is running a multifamily deal. It's very similar. I've been involved in deals across the U S in various markets and

Besides, you know certain small like landlord laws and things like that that the third-party management companies can be dealing with anyway It's kind of the same model, right? So to me it's more about the asset class Not necessarily the geography now if you're comparing owning a bunch of multifamily deals in Abilene, Texas And then the next one you go by is in New York City. Yeah, that's a big ass difference, right? But when you're looking at You know Dallas Fort Worth versus Atlanta or somewhere in Florida versus

Alabama or similar markets, I'm not as concerned about that. It's more about the asset class itself. Do they actually have value add experience? if they got a value add strategy, have they done this type of thing before? Have they actually bought a multifamily deal and have they turned around another deal that's somewhat similar in size? They can't be, have done a 10 unit and now they're buying a 200 unit. That's not comparable. I want to see if they're buying a 200 unit.

have they at least done 150 unit deal in a similar market where they turned around the deal and did a value add plan, something like that. One thing you have to watch out for, and I've noticed this a lot, and a lot of people don't think about this, is as you know, it got really frothy and multifamily, I don't know, starting in like 2016, 2017. If you bought in 2016, 2017 and you sold in 2021 or 2022, you, if you,

Pascal Wagner (45:11)
You hit, you hit the jackpot.

Hans Box (45:13)
Right. All you did, you could fog a mirror and make money. Right? And so what you have to, what I've noticed is a lot of IRR, a lot of these new multifamily syndicators that came and we're kind of concentrating on multifamily now, but this, the overarching thesis here would apply to any commercial real estate. But is when I look at the track record, a lot of these newer syndicators that actually have a ton of experience because they bought every deal in sight because they didn't know what they were doing and they could raise money.

So they, because they could raise money, they just bought every deal in sight without any, without any regard for the risks they were putting their investors in. And they might own 3000 units or have, have actually false, you know, may own 3000 units and have sold a thousand, you know, over the course of 2016 to 2022 or 2017, 2022. But what I, what I noticed on a lot of these guys is you look at the track record and you just look at their IRR, you're like, holy crap, their IRR is like 35%.

40 % average IRR and you just look at that as a new investment, you're like, oh, these guys are like rock stars. You know what they're doing. But what I would do is I would actually look at when did they buy the deal? When did they sell it? A of these deals were flipped. They would basically buy it in 2020, sell it in 22, buy it in 2019, sell it in 2021. They barely owned the deal for two years. Two years isn't even enough to implement a full value at typically. And if you're, you know, if you're doing it right. And so they had these really high IRRs because what they were doing is they bought the deal.

made a lot of fees and then flipped it to the next idiot that paid a lower cap rate two years later because interest rates dropped again, right? And they could get these cheap multifamily loans. And so I would look at these and go, well, okay, yeah, they have a 40 % IRR, but they've held these deals for an average of two and a half, two years. This to me, that doesn't mean anything, right? To me, they just rode the market and got lucky, right? So those are the kind of things you have to dig into. So instead of asking for IRR, would ask, okay,

Can you show me what your projected NOI was the day you bought the deal? Here's what we're projecting to get the NOI to. And then show me what the NOI was the year you sold it. Did you actually hit your projections in terms of net operating income? I don't care about cap rates because cap rates is what made all this money for some of these people that nobody has control over. So did they actually perform on their value-add business plan?

is really what I wanted to see. And that's where you have to dive in and really look at the, you can't just always look at the returns. You have to look at did they actually hit their pro forma numbers or did they just ride the frothiness of the market?

Pascal Wagner (47:35)
Yeah, so I've noticed this and I've noticed some of the people I know like Evoke Capital, APASHA, you know, in their decks, they specifically talk about their NOI growth, the net operating income growth, what the dynamics that they have control over that don't have anything related to the interest rate and what type of growth they had in improving the property performance. And I think

Hans Box (47:37)
you

Pascal Wagner (48:03)
Do operators have that kind of stuff on hand? What I've noticed is that if I go and I ask an operator, hey, could you show me NOI growth on a couple different deals? And I find that I often just get turned away because they're like, ⁓ don't have that. Or it's not something like we can easily provide to you. And so to me, that's like a,

Hans Box (48:02)
you

Thank

Okay.

Pascal Wagner (48:26)
I don't need to do anything else here. And that's a red flag. you know, let's

just kind of asking you as an operator, like, is that something that every operator kind of by default has on hand and they're just not showing it to you? they, is that something that they should have, but many don't? Yeah, talk to us about that.

Hans Box (48:45)
One, if they don't have it, run. If they have it don't show it, run. There's no reason at all an operator can't show you the NOI growth. That's like management 101. I think you knew the answer to that question. That was one other example I was going to bring up that's a good segue. One of the things I always want to do is verify how the current deals they own right now, they haven't sold.

I will ask, how are you, are those current deals doing compared to the original projections? In other words, has your NOI grown per your original projections? I got turned away by a very big multifamily operator asking that question. said, can you just send me your financials and your original projections on this, on whatever deal, right? And they were like, no, we can't, we can't share financials of a current deal. I'm like, why?

I said, I don't care what the name of the deal is. You can sanitize the name. You can cross it out. They said, no, because it's a private deal and that would be violating our commitment to our LPs and those deals. what is, I'm asking for a P &L on an apartment deal and I want you to show me the projections he originally had on this deal. They wouldn't share it. And that was like, done. I'm not going to look at them anymore. And they were a good company. But it's it's little things like that, that, you know,

you gotta have some way to cross out deals, number one. And if people aren't transparent upfront, I wanna know what they're gonna do if shit hits a fan. And if a company like that won't share stuff then, it doesn't make me feel all warm and fuzzy. I wanna feel a big warm bear hug from my sponsor that come work with me, I know that I can trust you kind of thing. And that doesn't make me feel warm, right? And so those are the kind of things I look for. And I'm not just asking to ask.

which is okay to do too, to see if they'll share. I wanted to actually see, are they actually hitting their projections? And if they aren't, that's okay. There may be external factors and then they can explain it to me. And if they can explain it to me and show me, okay, we made a mistake here. We learned our lesson. Kind of like when I would ask, know, what's the worst deal you've ever done? Well, what could you have done differently? Honestly, a good answer to that is great. Cause everybody's going to have a that didn't hit projections.

We have deals that didn't have, we have a deal that didn't have pre-projections and there's a good reason for it. Am I making excuses? No, but I would be happy to share it with any investor. It's just part of you do enough deals. You're not going to hit every projection. Nobody can be perfect. Right. And so it's more about the person and are they going to be transparent and they going to, did they learn from their mistake and can they, they be honest? I mean, in the end it's about integrity, right. And being transparent and being honest.

Pascal Wagner (51:16)
Yeah, I think about this a little bit. Audited financials versus not. I'd love to kind of get your take. know, I think, you know, I've heard from many people that, you know, they just stuck to deals with audited financials, they probably wouldn't have lost as much money. I think audited financials is, you know, it is very expensive to do for an operator and is

Hans Box (51:23)
yeah.

Pascal Wagner (51:42)
higher likelihood of happening if you've got hundreds of millions under management. But if you're not doing audited financials, the next best thing is showing the pro forma and showing even bank statements or anything like that. What's your take and your general philosophy around audited versus unaudited deals on financials?

Hans Box (52:03)
Yeah,

so I mean the comment that they wouldn't have lost much money they just did deals with all Audited financials. I think that's coming from somebody. It's not very experienced to be honest look you're not going to have audited financials on Especially with smaller multifamily operators because one multifamily property

And most of these deals are single asset deals. These aren't funds. Okay. It's one thing to have a large fund. Yeah. You have a large fund. You probably can afford to across the properties, be able to support paying hundreds of thousands for these audited financials, right? Or I don't know the number. It's a big number, right? But a 200 unit apartment complex is not going to have audited financials. That's insane. It would cut into so much the cost of the financials. It just doesn't make sense.

That is where you as an LP need to figure out how to learn and vet sponsors and figure out if they're honest. Because, you know, an audited financial is great for a big fund, but it's too expensive for a small fund. And honestly, it's at the detriment of LPs. A lot of your money is being thrown away, giving it to a PricewaterhouseCoopers or Deloitte to go look at financials that really aren't that complicated. So number one, you need to learn how to read financials as an LP. If you can't read financials as an LP, you shouldn't be investing $100,000 in any deal.

You need to just go stick your money into a S and P ETF and be done with it. So part of this is putting your big boy pants on and learning that you have to learn and you are, you're taking some risks to get bigger returns and you don't have, you know, this, uh, I guess the public equity's protection, which in my mind isn't protection at all because you can get me on a soapbox there. I think if you learned that that deals, uh, you can protect yourself a lot more in private investments than you can.

in the market that could go up and down based on emotional sentiment that something like an illiquid apartment deal won't if you have a good sponsor. So, audited financials do not make any sense for single asset deals. For funds, yeah, it does make sense for certain funds and it adds level of trust, right? But for, not for single asset deals. It's just not going to happen. We don't have audited financials. And if you think you won't invest in me unless I do, that means you don't trust me as a person for some reason, or you haven't, you're too lazy to try to vet me. And I'm happy to

share with you anything. Again, it's about the transparency. The audit financials aren't going, you know, I believe, if I'm not mistaken, that much of the big Wall Street, you know, Ponzi schemes were audited. And some of them were. I mean, that didn't stop shit. People lost billions, right? So it's not about that. It's a lazy man's way of saying, I want a better deal.

Pascal Wagner (54:25)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Hans Box (54:35)
and you're not going to, you just can't do a single asset deal and have audited financials.

Pascal Wagner (54:40)
I know we're kind of getting close on time, but I would love to just dive into that one last piece of the soapbox of why you think you can be more protected in private markets than public. Because I think that's misconception.

Hans Box (54:55)
Yeah, and you know, I'm biased, but the reason I think so is this. I can go look at a deal, touch, feel, see a deal that I'm investing in. I can go shake the hand of the man or the woman that is the sponsor of this private deal, right? Or the men and women. I can go meet the entire team. I can go see the property. I can see it.

If they're a good sponsor, like we just touched on for the last hour, I can basically get all the information I need, know, share with me, just like in the public markets, right? That's forced to be shared. But the difference is, that one, it's illiquid. So most investors don't make good money in the markets because they pull money out at the wrong time, put money in at the wrong time, right? Everyone knows that, right?

And markets can go up and down because emotional sentiment that have nothing to do with the underlying companies cash flows or the companies themselves. And so there's all this, you the SEC is there to quote for the public, right? Is there to protect the public markets? Well, they haven't protected, I mean, there's been huge Ponzi schemes that have been in the public markets and fraud. hasn't stopped fraud.

What stops fraud is being able to learn how to bet the deals yourself. Now I say it's not for, public markets would be for somebody that doesn't want to put in the time. I'm not saying you need to be able to put in the time. And actually I say this in my presentation. A lot of people will spend days, weeks, months researching the next new iPhone they want to buy, the next Mac, the next TV, or heaven forbid you buy a new car. Some people will spend

you know, countless hours figuring out what car to buy and how to get the best deal and which dealership to go to. And, know, you see the post, it's super complicated, but you know, you can go through to try to get the best deal on a car. But those same people, I see those same people will hear one pitch from a guy and just hand over a hundred grand on a multifamily deal without doing any betting whatsoever. So when I say that it's safe in the public markets, it's safer for the people that will be willing to spend the time. I think it,

know, passive investing in a way becomes a second job until you learn how to bet. And you have to put in tens, hundreds of hours before I think that you can be good at it. But once you are decent at it, more times than not, you're going to win. Yeah, you might be in some deals that lose money, but I guarantee everyone that's been in the market for any amount of time has lost money in stock market. Everyone of us has, right? And so you can, because it's a liquid, you don't pull money in and out.

and you can go see the sponsor, you can't go invest in a huge company and shake the hand of the CEO, the COO, or the CFO, or ask them any questions. All you can do is look at these complicated legal docs, whatever they are, online, and try to read these complicated financials and connect all the docs between a million different subsidiaries and that. When I'm looking at a farming deal, it's pretty damn simple. Are the rents underneath the market? Right?

The sponsor have a track record. Are they an honest person? And can they perform on that business plan? It's not that complicated. To me, it's a lot more complicated to look at a Facebook and go, well, yeah, I think based on all these things that the Facebook's gonna continue to go up in value. Who can answer that? The layman cannot. It's much easier to vet an apartment deal, but you have to learn how to vet deals. Now, if you're the type that doesn't wanna spend the time, then yeah, hand your money over to a registered investment advisor.

not a broker dealer, a registered investment advisor, somebody like my brother is an RA. So I'm saying this with my own family in the markets and that's what he does for a living. And I do this for a living, right? There is a place for people that don't want to put in the time to just hand money to RA and let them invest and then they make an AUM fee on it. That's one way to invest. But if you really want to actually make good cashflow and create a freedom in your life with cashflow without having to have millions and millions and millions of dollars, you know,

then you need to the time and learn how to get deals. it's actually, being is kind of fun and you meet a lot of great people. And it's a great way to make a living if you're willing to put in the work. But you've got to put in the work.

Pascal Wagner (58:46)
Hans, this was awesome. Do you have your own investor list? Where can people join your investor list or learn more about you or follow along?

Hans Box (58:55)
Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, we have our own company. It's not real. It's not a real catchy name. It's my last name and his last name is called Box Wilson Equity. can find us at Box Wilson. That's B-O-X-W-I-L-S-O-N.com. You can email me at hbox at boxwilson.com. And I'm happy to answer any questions. know, we do small syndications, do a few deals a year. We're not huge.

You know, we have, we've grown our investor list just by organic growth and referrals. We don't advertise. you know, and we're just trying to do down the fairway deals that we look for as, as LPs ourselves, we invest in every deal ourselves. and, ⁓ you know, ⁓ we're, we're looking to always grow our investor list, but we're, ⁓ you know, we're not, don't do 30 deals a year. We might do two or three typically is, is kind of in our average. So.

Pascal Wagner (59:42)
Awesome. Awesome. Hans, thank you so much for sharing your expertise and your real world insights today. I'm confident our listeners walked away with a much clearer understanding of how to evaluate deals, protect their investments and kind of just build a smarter real estate portfolio. So for those of you listening, if you're serious about growing your passive income and making more informed investment decisions, be sure to join us next Thursday and every Thursday for more actionable strategies here on the passive income playbook.

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